He remembers the look on his mother Ella's face when he told her he was buying her a house with some of his $6 million signing bonus after the Rays made him the first player taken in the 2008 draft _ No. 1.

"Knowing that she was living in a one-room apartment, for me to be able to give her a big house with a big yard outside of where I grew up, it was great," Tim Beckham said.

He makes himself remember last April, that long pause on the other end of phone line, then the pain in his father Jimmy's voice after he learned his youngest son had been suspended 50 games for a second violation of the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program _ for marijuana use.

Tim Beckham might have made the major leagues last season, for the first time, if it hadn't been for that. It fueled the notion that Beckham might be a costly swing and a miss for the Rays, a bust, not a Buster, as in Posey.

"It was the hardest to tell my Pops," Beckham said. "My father works for General Motors. He got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and drove 45 minutes to an hour to work just to put food on the table."

Tim Beckham isn't out of chances. He's at spring training, upbeat, smiling, trying to make the majors, again. He'll start in the minors, Durham, Triple-A, again, then we'll see.

"I just try to learn from my mistakes and put everything in the rear view mirror," Beckham said. "I messed up. It definitely wasn't a smart decision, letting my teammates, this organization and my family down ... But it's 2013. The sky is the limit. We have a great team here, everything we need to make a push. And I think I can help this team do that, I think I can produce."

It's 2013. You move on. That's just it: Beckham, once the top prospect in all of baseball, hasn't moved fast enough. The 23-year-old middle infielder is entering his sixth professional season, having climbed the ladder in the minors, always slowed by his bat which noticeably trails his glove. Funny, when Beckham was drafted, people worried more about the defense.